Perfect in Understanding

The pressures and shakings of our times highlight the great need in the church for spiritual understanding. The Lord’s people are called in this hour to be separate from natural thinking and worldly understanding and to press into the stability and wisdom of the mind of Christ.

The apostle Paul repeatedly sets our sights on the lofty peak of spiritual maturity found in Christ. Steady progress in this appointed course demands divine understanding – the ability to both perceive divine knowledge and rightly divide the word of truth.

It’s clear that we all stand at different levels of spiritual understanding having started off as spiritual babes. Paul testified that when he was a child, he understood as a child (1 Cor. 13:11). However, when he became a man he put away thinking and reasoning as a child. There’s understanding that belongs only to children that we’re called to set aside. Some of us may have reached a plateau with regards to our perception of divine truths. We only have ears for what is familiar. Perhaps we find ourselves in a state of little or no change following a period of active progress. However, this is not characteristic of the life of the kingdom.

The kingdom of God is a kingdom of increase from age to age, from glory to glory, from experience to experience, from revelation to revelation, and from understanding to understanding. In each of our lives the progressive experiences of entering, inheriting and possessing the kingdom are rooted in corresponding levels of maturity and understanding. Fundamental then to our development from children to sons of full age is progress from the elementary and basic teachings of Christ into deeper truths of revelation (Heb. 6:1).

While this truth may be evident to most, the proclivity of much of Christendom has been to resist any new revelation or new truth. Today majority of the Lord’s people find themselves in allegiance with an institution that rejects the inflow of new light. Many are content in in-part realms of knowledge and lower spheres of spiritual experience. Therein lies the primary cause for the current state of the church.

Only when the Spirit of God moves upon us sovereignly, to exert an influence that is beyond our natural mind to resist, will we begin to press into greater heights of divine understanding. It’s then that God begins to illuminate deeper truth of His will and purpose to us. We read in Job that it is the inspiration of the Almighty that gives understanding (Job 32:8).

Spiritual understanding is the function of the mind of the new creation man, which is the mind of Christ. It’s His mind raised up within us which equips us with all the faculties to perceive, judge and understand divine truths. This mind has the power to consider and discern soberly, calmly and impartially.

In our opening text Paul encouraged the saints to be mature (teleios – perfect) in understanding. Perfection is the standard of understanding that we’re all called to. This state of being perfect in understanding is attained by possessing the spirit of understanding, which is one of the seven Spirits of God (Isa. 11:2, Rev. 4:5). The seven Spirits of God is the complete fullness of the Spirit of God (the Spirit without measure) and proceed from the Lamb in the midst of the throne (Rev. 5:6). The throne signifies a higher realm of spiritual attainment appointed to those who have entered into union and identification with Christ by putting on His mind and nature.

This position is designated to the overcomers; those who have left behind the limitations of the candlestick realm (church order) to be solely governed by the life of the Son. These look only to the One who sits on the throne and partake of all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden in Him. It is here that we find God’s corporate company of sons, the kingly priesthood, endued with the spirit of understanding.

Possessing the spirit of understanding equips us with eyes that see as our Heavenly Father sees and a heart that understands and know as He understands and knows. It was this same spirit of understanding which the Lord Jesus received in the days of His flesh equipping Him for His sonship ministry (Isa. 11:2). Thus, He could see (understand) all the Father did. “For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does” (Joh. 5:20).

Every child of God who is predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son is called to partake of the same spirit of understanding. This journey begins now. It begins by the renewal of our mind through the Word of God. It begins when the testimony of the Spirit and the Word are unrestrained to bear witness in our hearts. It begins when the eyes of our understanding are enlightened to experience the truth of God as inward reality. It begins when we put off the religious mind with its destructive and lifeless dogmas to surrender to the voice of Him who is the Truth.

This is why the ministry and teaching of the gospel of the Kingdom is paramount in our day. We are in dire need of a pure ministry and a pure word, free from the defilement of man’s teachings. This is also why God has commissioned His sons to be set apart in this age to be lifted to newer and higher realms of understanding, no longer to be vessels of mixture. For only then can we be light in spheres of religious darkness.

In line with this, a dear brother has been continuously reminding me that God has called us to advance the Kingdom in our age by “returning the truth to its rightful place”.

The increase of the reality and power of God’s Kingdom in the hearts of His people demands a revolution of spiritual understanding. Only then can the church move out of the darkness of tradition, limitations and immaturity!

May God give you a heart that is inclined to understanding and yielded to the light of His truth.